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BEIJING: Days after a 17-year-old girl tested positive for COVID-19 in a remote part of western China last week, health authorities said they had tested more than 4.7 million people in the region.
China’s strict formula of immediate lockdowns and mass testing, even at the first signs of infection, has been vital to its success in controlling the disease, allowing its economy to quickly recover from the crisis, officials say.
The highly orchestrated strategy, described as “overdone” even by its own proponents, is unique among major economies at a time when Europe and the United States are facing a massive surge in new cases and often chaotic policies.
At the time the girl was diagnosed, the Kashgar region of Xinjiang had reported no new cases for nearly 70 days.
READ: More massive tests in China after 137 cases of COVID-19 in Xinjiang
“China has taken the most comprehensive, stringent and comprehensive control and prevention measures since the COVID-19 pandemic began,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday (October 28).
“The facts show that China’s measures are effective.”
The key to the program are factors unique to China, including the Communist Party’s strict control of all aspects of society.
Authorities have unhindered access to personal information as part of an expansive surveillance network, which has played an important role in tracking infections.
The government has also swiftly enlisted the help of companies, which are producing tens of millions of test kits, and tightly controls their price and distribution, problems that have severely delayed efforts to contain the disease in other countries.
China has reported only 2,382 cases since June. By contrast, Germany and France will follow Italy and Spain back into partial lockdowns, as Europe reported a record 230,000 cases in one day earlier this week, while cases in the United States will hit 9 million soon.
MASSIVE TESTS
In August, Beijing ordered all major hospitals in the country to offer testing, and said there should be an urban test base built for every million residents, with the capacity to scale up to 30,000 tests per day in a local outbreak.
The regions must also share resources, in stark contrast to the early days of the outbreak, when multiple cities were accused of stealing equipment from each other.
READ: Asia becomes the second region to exceed 10 million COVID-19 cases
The system, like all Chinese communist projects, is highly structured around specific goals; Test teams should be able to complete a campaign in seven days.
Earlier this month, nearly 11 million test results were delivered in about five days in the eastern port city of Qingdao. In Wuhan, the initial epicenter of the pandemic, more than 9 million samples were taken over 10 days in May.
Mass testing is mandatory. Some are held in outdoor sports facilities and city parks, with hundreds of people lining up.
FACILITATE PEOPLE
Epidemiologists have questioned the efficacy of mass testing events, noting that some patients require multiple tests over time to obtain a positive result.
Testing in Kashgar this week revealed around 38 positive cases for every 1 million people tested. In Qingdao, a massive test of around 10.9 million samples revealed no infection after 13 initial cases were detected.
The tests are also expensive. Wuhan’s 10-day spree cost 900 million yuan ($ 134.27 million), according to official figures, even as the government intervened to keep costs down.
Reuters previously reported that Chinese hospitals had started purchasing millions of dollars worth of test equipment in an unprecedented wave of medical expenses.
But the massive tests are also a linchpin of the political theater for Beijing, which faced a wave of internal criticism in the early days of the outbreak.
“After the nucleic acid detection test, people and administrative officials felt at ease,” Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control, said in an interview with local media.
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